hat _soirees_ improve one."

He will not go into the world:--

"I don't believe this worldly life does any good; how could such a world
ever be made? Of what use are dandies, for instance, and kings, and
fellows at college, and women of a certain age, and many men of my age,
myself foremost?"

Having changed his apartments, he had not yet got all his books; was
reading without order, composing nothing; and he suffered in
consequence. "I must set myself to do something directly; my heart
already begins to feed on itself." He accuses himself of not profiting
enough by time. "Twenty-six years of age! I might and ought to be a
Pasha at that age. '_I 'gin to be weary of the sun._'" But let him be
with a clever friend, like Moore, for instance, and, oh! then the
_ennui_ of salons becomes metamorphosed into pleasure for him, without
taking away his clearsightedness as to the world's worth.

"Are you going this evening," writes he to Moore, "to Lady Cahir's? I
will, if you do; and wherever we can unite in follies, let us embark on
the _same ship of fools_. I went to bed at five, and got up at nine."

And elsewhere, after having expressed his disappointment at seeing Moore
so little during the season, he calls London "a populous desert, where
one should be able to keep one's thirst like the camel. _The streams are
so few, and for the most part so muddy._"

And ten years later, in the fourteenth canto of "Don Juan," he said,
speaking of fashionable London society:--

"Although it seems both prominent and pleasant,
There is a sameness in its gems and ermine,
A dull and family likeness through all ages,
Of no great promise for poetic pages.

XVI.

"With much to excite, there's little to exalt;
Nothing that speaks to all men and all times;
A sort of varnish over every fault;
A kind of commonplace, even in their crimes;
Factitious passions, wit without much salt,
A want of that true nature which sublimes
Whate'er it shows with truth; a smooth monotony
Of character, in those at least who have got any.

XVII.

"Sometimes, indeed, like soldiers off parade,
They break their ranks and gladly leave the drill;
But then the roll-call draws them back afraid,
And they must be or seem what they were: still
Doubtless it is a brilliant masquerade;
But when of the first sight you have had your fill,
It palls--at least it did so upon me,
This paradise of _pleasure and ennu